Charades: Why I don't know what 'love' is

All "corporal punishment" does is normalize violence, brutalize children and satisfy adults' needs for compliance.

Recently, I found myself in a Facebook thread among folks bemoaning the lack of "discipline" among children and young folks, and fantasizing about the good old days when you could beat one's children howsoever one desired, extolling the virtues of corporal punishment, and bewailing the lack of more of it--you know: "Kids these days need to be beaten, but the snowflakes object"--and it awoke deep feelings in me...as it always does. I reproached them, of course, and as politely as possible.

"When did you stop beating your children," I asked.

" Beating children with switches and sticks isn't discipline, it's felony child abuse.

"People say, "well I turned out okay."

"I say, really? Then why are you beating your children into obedience, silence and submission?

"That's pretty fucked up, actually; criminal, even. "You're NOT "Okay." Get help before you hurt somebody.

But it just made me feel hollow, my gut clenched as if in anticipation of another blow.....

CONTEXT:

When I appeared right after WW II, my folks didn't have ANY IDEA about raising kids, being both privileged children of distant/detached parents themselves.  BOTH my parents were horribly ill-suited for the task of being parents, having both been the spoiled and cosseted offspring of successful Men of Business BEFORE the Depression and who survived it with their most of their wealth and possessions. They met in college in 1940, at a fencing tournament. 

My mother bore four live births, but she despised being a "mother." I truly think she considered it beneath her considerable talents, because she thought (and was often right) that she was the smartest one in the room. Like MANY women of her generation, she felt 'captured' by a role she didn't want or particularly like to play.  Eventually, captive of serious medical conditions, she took her (often prescription drug amplified) frustrations out on me. 

 She slapped me around just about every day from age 10 until I left home for the military right out of High School. She'd just stand me before her and start slapping me, and slapping me. As I got older, and became more stoic, the beating increased, too. I couldn't tell my father since I suspected he secretly approved.

As I think now, I was probably indelibly scarred by my mother's incessant violence upon me and my father's casual acceptance of it.

 I got through it, but leaving a trail strewn with broken relationships and emotional damage (three failed marriages, and countless "serious" affairs) throughout the whole of my entire 'romantic' career. I was (am) broken, inside, I now know, and didn't really notice until about 15 years ago, by which time I had pretty much permanently removed myself from the lists.

 As, now, alone with my dog--also a grizzled veteran--a grumpy, slowly shrinking "Senior" of 75, I've hope I've done all the damage I'm gonna do, either to myself or others, in one lifetime. 

I don't think about MY "future" much. But I've actually managed to learn to meet one day at a time, without desperation or enthusiasm or regret.